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Learning to be a culturally responsiveteacher through international studytrips: transformation or tourism?Ninetta Santoro a & Jae Major aa School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University ,Bathurst , AustraliaPublished online: 03 Aug 2012.
To cite this article: Ninetta Santoro & Jae Major (2012) Learning to be a culturally responsiveteacher through international study trips: transformation or tourism?, Teaching Education, 23:3,309-322, DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2012.685068
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2012.685068
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Learning to be a culturally responsive teacher throughinternational study trips: transformation or tourism?
Ninetta Santoro* and Jae Major
School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia
(Received 21 October 2011; final version received 14 January 2012)
Recent rapid changes in the ethnic and cultural make-up of school communitieshave highlighted the need for teacher education to prepare teachers for culturallydiverse contexts. International study trips provide direct experience and interac-tion with culturally diverse ‘others’ as a way to extend pre-service teachers’understandings of difference and diversity. This paper presents findings from aqualitative study that investigated the experiences of 15 Australian pre-serviceteachers who attended a short-term study programme in either Korea or India.Drawing on notions of the ‘comfort zone’ and ‘pedagogies of discomfort’, wediscuss how the pre-service teachers were challenged to move beyond theircomfort zone into new and unfamiliar territory, and into states of dissonanceand discomfort. Three interrelated themes emerged from the interview data: (1)dissonance resulting from physical discomfort; (2) dissonance resulting fromculturally different communication styles and expectations about appropriatebehaviour and interaction and (3) dissonance resulting from incidents/events thatchallenged the pre-service teachers’ views of themselves and their own cultures.We suggest that many of the participants experienced levels of discomfort anddissonance that hindered effective learning, and limited the transformative poten-tial of the experience. We conclude by discussing some implications for interna-tional experience programmes in teacher education.
Keywords: pre-service teacher education; cultural diversity; international studytrips; pedagogies of discomfort
Introduction
In the last 25 years in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Europe andmany other parts of the world, the ethnic and cultural make-up of school communi-ties has undergone rapid and radical change (Leeman, 2008; Liddicoat & Diaz,2008; Osler & Starkey, 2006; Schmidt, 2010; Smyth, Darmody, Mcginnity, &Byrne, 2009; Westrick & Yuen, 2007). This has occurred in response to unprece-dented levels of forced and voluntary migration and the development of global edu-cation markets. Such diversity has meant that teachers need to be able to workproductively with culturally and linguistically diverse students as well as prepare allstudents, including those from the dominant majority, to be culturally aware,responsible and culturally competent global citizens. However, although the profes-sional requisite to effectively teach diverse student cohorts is well established, it is
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Teaching EducationVol. 23, No. 3, September 2012, 309–322
ISSN 1047-6210 print/ISSN 1470-1286 online� 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2012.685068http://www.tandfonline.com
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inconsistently and often ineffectively addressed in teacher education and in general,teachers are not well prepared to teach in culturally diverse schools (e.g. Allard &Santoro, 2006; Dantas, 2007; Landorf, Rocco, & Nevin, 2007). They often lackknowledge of culturally responsive pedagogies, including knowledge about theirstudents’ cultural beliefs, values and practices, and how these shape them as learn-ers. Dantas (2007, p. 78) claims
… the challenge resides in the damaging impact of deficit beliefs and stereotypesabout what counts as learning […] combined with the invisibility and disconnect ofwhat diverse students bring as funds of knowledge in classroom assessment andinstructional practices.
Furthermore, teachers, most of whom are drawn from the hegemonic ‘mainstream’,have little understanding of themselves as encultured. Nor have they interrogatedhow the pedagogical decisions they make and the relationships they develop withstudents are also shaped by their ethnic positioning and the cultural knowledge,beliefs and values they bring with them to their work (Santoro 2007, 2009).
An ongoing concern in teacher education, therefore, is how to prepare culturallyresponsive teachers. Some research (Cushner & Brennan, 2007; Walters, Garii, &Walters, 2009) suggests that direct experience and interaction with culturally diverse‘others’ is one way to extend pre-service teachers’ understandings of difference anddiversity. Such experiences can challenge pre-service teachers ‘to read and interprettheir experiences with diversity and understanding of self, and the interconnected-ness with their own students’ lives and school opportunities’ (Dantas, 2007, p. 76).It can challenge deficit notions of difference and promote the use of culturallyresponsive pedagogies in the classroom (Dantas, 2007). Brown suggests that ‘expo-sure to a new culture has transformative potential’ (Brown, 2009, p. 504), becauseit ‘evolves from a confrontation with a new culture into an encounter with the self’(p. 505). In Australia, as in Europe and North America, opportunities for interna-tional experiences1 are increasingly being made available to pre-service teachers inorder to deepen their understandings of cultures different from their own, and toensure they have the experience and insight from which to develop a ‘global per-spective of life and teaching’ (Kissock & Richardson, 2010, p. 95). Ochoa claimsthat teacher preparation programmes are ‘enriched when teacher candidates […]examine the world from different perspectives and learn to create new approachesto teaching and learning’ (2010, p. 108).
While there is a substantial body of research that has investigated the potentialof course-based international experiences to contribute to the development of globalcitizens (e.g. Black & Duhon, 2006; Doyle et al., 2010; Edmonds, 2010; Johnson,2006) and a growing body of literature from North America, Britain and Europethat focuses on the internationalisation of teacher education and the preparation ofthe global teacher (e.g. Dantas, 2007; Devlin-Foltz, 2010; Dooly & Villanueva,2006; Kissock & Richardson, 2010; Rapoport, 2008; Scoffham & Barnes, 2009),there has been relatively little research in Australia that has examined the effective-ness of international experiences for pre-service teachers, and even less that exam-ines how international experiences contribute to Australian pre-service teachers’understandings of themselves as encultured. This article contributes to addressingthat gap. It reports on a qualitative study that investigated the experiences of 15Australian pre-service teachers who attended a short-term study programme in either
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Korea or India. These programmes provided opportunities for pre-service teachersto experience living in cultures significantly different from their own and to partici-pate in, and observe the teaching and education practices of these contexts and toreflect on their own ethnicity and the challenge of being a cultural ‘outsider’. Inwhat follows, we review some of the literature about the ‘comfort zone’, dissonanceand pedagogies of discomfort. We describe the study’s design and present excerptsof interview data under three main themes: physical challenges, communicationchallenges and challenges to identity. We then draw conclusions about what the stu-dents learned about self and others through the dissonance created by these chal-lenges. We conclude by discussing some implications for international experienceprogrammes in teacher education.
Towards intercultural competence: dissonance and pedagogies of discomfort
Theories around cognitive development (Piaget, 1977) and cognitive dissonance(Festinger, 1957) underpin beliefs that dissonance or disequilibrium is an importantprecursor to learning. Festinger (1957) argues that when we are presented withinformation, events and ideas that are in conflict with our existing knowledge andexpectations, we are challenged to think differently. More recently, scholars in thearea of outdoor education have worked with this theory to develop what they callthe comfort zone model (e.g. Prouty, Panicucci, & Collinson, 2007). This modelincorporates three areas or zones of ‘comfort’ in which students are located whenthey encounter situations involving change, risk or challenge. The first is the com-fort zone, where little, if any discomfort is felt and where minimum dissonanceleads to minimum change in students’ thinking. The second zone is the growth/learning zone, where some discomfort and dissonance facilitates a rethinking ofideas, and therefore, learning. The third zone is the panic zone, where extreme lev-els of discomfort and dissonance hinder learning (Brown, 2008 after Panicucci,2007) because students do not engage with new ways of thinking, but rather retreatto avoid addressing the issues raised. The comfort zone model assumes that risktaking is necessary for students to move beyond the edge of comfort into new andunfamiliar territory, and into states of dissonance in order to construct knowledge(Brown, 2008; Luckner & Nadler, 1997; Prouty et al., 2007). It also assumes thatstudents understand the benefits of moving beyond their comfort zone and are pre-pared to do so. However, as a pedagogical strategy, this model is not without itsproblems. Brown (2008) questions the use of the theory that underpins many out-door adventure programmes, whereby participants are deliberately pushed out oftheir comfort zones in order to promote intellectual development and personalgrowth. He problematises the notion that the success of an adventure educationexperience should be measured by how far out of their comfort zone participantswere able to be pushed, and the notion that learning only occurs when one is out ofone’s comfort zone. This is not to say, however, that dissonance does not have ben-eficial effects to learning and shifting attitudes. In the context of this study, thecomfort zone model is useful to us in offering a lens through which to make senseof our data.
Other educators such as Boler and Zembylas (2003) also use the term comfortzone but particularly, in relation to what they have termed a pedagogy of discom-fort, an ‘educational approach to understanding the production of norms and differ-ence that moves individuals outside their comfort zone’ (2003, p. 111).
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By comfort zone, we mean the inscribed cultural and emotional terrains that weoccupy less by choice and more by virtue of hegemony […] A pedagogy of discom-fort recognizes and problematizes the deeply embedded emotional dimensions thatframe and shape daily habits, routines and unconscious complicity with hegemony[…] By closely examining emotional reactions and responses […] one begins to iden-tify unconscious privileges as well as invisible ways in which one complies with dom-inant ideology. (Boler & Zembylas, 2003, p. 111)
Sometimes, positioning pre-service teachers outside their comfort zone is anapproach used in teacher education in order to facilitate their thinking about theirown privilege in relation to marginalised racial and ethnic others. Aveling’s work inAustralian teacher education has focused on enabling white pre-service teachers tothink about how they, as members of the white hegemonic majority, are implicatedin the marginalisation of the racial ‘other’. She draws on the work of Simon to referto this as ‘teaching against the grain’ (Aveling, 2006, p. 262) and goes onto say itis ‘always risky business’ (Aveling, 2006, p. 262), because ‘exploring “race” andracism with White students goes to the very heart of our socially constructed identi-ties’ (Aveling, 2006, p. 264). However, the dissonance created by presenting stu-dents with concepts and ideas that challenge sometimes deeply entrenched views,and the associated discomfort can ultimately, lead to learning. According to Zemby-las and McGlynn (2010) who draw on the work of Berlak, ‘If a major purpose ofteaching is to unsettle taken-for-granted views and emotions, then some discomfortis not only unavoidable but may also be necessary’ (p. 3). Positioning students out-side their comfort zone is often achieved in teacher education via academic workand guided discussions. However, for students undertaking international experi-ences, dissonance arises from being in an unfamiliar environment that may be phys-ically, culturally, socially and emotionally challenging. Furthermore, if they areinvolved in teaching in a culturally different context, this can create ‘cultural, peda-gogical and ideological dissonance, a sensation that promotes increased ideologicalawareness and clarity’ (Alfaro & Quezada, 2010, p. 50).
The study
The qualitative case study reported here investigated what teacher education stu-dents perceive to be the benefits of a short-term international study experience. Thekey research question was; ‘How does an overseas experience assist students gainknowledge that will enhance their readiness for teaching in culturally diverse con-texts?’ After obtaining university ethics approval, volunteer participants were soughtfrom a cohort of nine students who had gone to Korea on a 3-week study tour anda cohort of 15 students who had gone to India on a 4-week study tour. The organi-sation of both trips was outsourced to a third party, who negotiated the provision ofactivities and schedules. In the case of Korea, this was a university in a major Kor-ean city and in India, a non-government organisation. The Korean trip was closelysupervised by organisers at the hosting university and included lectures about Kor-ean language and culture and trips to significant Korean cultural tourist sites andeducation institutions. Accommodation was in hotels, university dormitories andhomestays. Students were paired with a Korean ‘Buddy’ with whom they interactedand sought advice. The students were accompanied by an academic who had livedand taught in Korea for 8 years, could speak fluent Korean and was well versed inKorean culture. The students on the 4-week India trip were less closely supervised
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Table1.
Participantinform
ation–pre-serviceteachers.
Indiatrip
Korea
trip
Pseudonym
Age
First-tim
eoverseas
Ethnicity
Pseudonym
Age
First-tim
eoverseas
Ethnicity
Tanya
49Yes
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Tyler
21No–Japan,
USA,Europe,
China
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Bethany
21Yes
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Jacob
39No–England,Europe,
Russia,
Cam
bodia
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Kelly
20Yes
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Sonia
32No–South
America,
NZ
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Ellen
34No–Britain,Europe,
Asia,
NZ,Thailand
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Jane
35No–Solom
onIslands
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Caitlin
21No–Bali,Fiji
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Lucy
20No–Japan
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Tamsin
21No–N
Z,Thailand
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Kathy
49No–China
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Adelin
e20
No–England,
Germany
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
Sally
21No–Macedonia
Macedonian-
Australian
Terry
21No–NZ,USA
Anglo-Celtic
Australian
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and travelled independently each day from their accommodation in a village in cen-tral India to schools, including an orphanage school and a special needs schoolwhere they taught English. They also went on some trips to tourist sites. The stu-dents were accompanied by a non-academic member of staff of the students’ uni-versity who had lived in India and was very familiar with many Indian culturalpractices. The pre-service teachers relied on the teachers with whom they came incontact, the group leader and the trip organisers for cultural information.
Seven students from the Korea programme volunteered to participate in thestudy reported here, and eight from the India trip. Each group had a mix of studentswho were at various points in either a Primary Teaching Degree or a SecondaryTeaching degree. While both groups of students participated in briefing sessions toprepare them for their trips, their exposure to academic content related to diversityand difference was limited and occurred at various points in their courses with nospecific subject devoted solely to these concerns. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with the students as well as the two group leaders whoprovided a different perspective on the students’ experiences. The interviews wereconducted about 2months after the pre-service teachers had arrived back in Austra-lia. Data for this paper are drawn from the interviews with these 15 students. Thequestions aimed to elicit information from the students about: their backgroundsand ethnicity; their reasons for going on an international experience; what theyexpected to learn from the trip and whether their expectations were met, how thetrip contributed to their development as a teacher; a situation that challenged themand why and how they managed being in a different environment and their percep-tions of the organisation of the trip. The interviews lasted on average 1.5 hours,were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and returned to individual participantsfor checking and verification (see Table 1).
Drawing on naturalistic methods (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), the transcripts of theinterviews with the 15 pre-service teachers were read and re-read by the researchersin order to identify recurring patterns of experience. These excerpts of experiencewere then coded and organised under broad themes informed by, but not replicatingthe three zones of the ‘comfort zone model’. We sought evidence of the experiencesthat challenged the pre-service teachers to take risks, to move beyond their comfortzone into new and unfamiliar territory, and into states of dissonance and discomfort.The three headings we have used to present our data focus on the dissonance/dis-comfort created by: (1) physical discomfort resulting from different cultural prac-tices and expectations; (2) culturally different communication styles andexpectations about appropriate behaviour and interaction and (3) incidents/eventsthat challenged the pre-service teachers’ views of themselves and own cultures. Wethen considered how these various states of dissonance and discomfort facilitatedlearning and the construction of knowledge.
Physical challenges: tiny towels, squat toilets and sleeping mats
An aspect that impacted significantly on the students’ ability to settle into a newenvironment was their sense of physical discomfort. The main issues raised in theinterviews were the toilets, hygiene and the sleeping arrangements. Differences inthe way basic matters such as ablutions were performed surprised some students.‘And the small towels! They had such tiny little towels. Yeah, just little things likethat. The toilets, that was another surprise. The squatting toilet!’ (Jane, Korea).
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Bethany, who struggled significantly with the different level of personal comfortand the cleanliness of the physical environment in India, said: ‘I’m used to verygood hygiene and comfort, none of which we had. […] It was a challenge for meto be living like that’. The sleeping arrangements were commented on the most fre-quently. For example, all the students in the Korea group were surprised that Kore-ans make up their beds on mats on the floor. Having to sleep on the floor wasparticularly confronting for some students who found this level of physical discom-fort, extreme. However, to a large extent, the anxiety that sleeping on the floorcaused was related to expectations. For example, the students had been told thatthey would be sleeping on mats on the floor when they visited a traditional Koreanvillage. This did not cause the same intense negative response as did sleeping onthe floor in the hotels where they expected a western style bed. Kathy admitted hav-ing ‘a bit of a hissy fit’ over finding that her bedding in a hotel was on the floor,and she was not alone in this reaction. Tanya spoke for several students on theIndia trip when she said ‘I was gobsmacked, because I didn’t expect the world, butI wasn’t expecting a mattress on the floor with a thin, a thin rug’. For others, get-ting used to less personal space was particularly challenging and confronting. Thisrelated not only to sharing rooms, but also dealing with large crowds of people ona daily basis. ‘And personal space was the other thing that really struck me […]that they don’t value it [… they’re] in your face and they’re everywhere’ (Tamsin,India). The students described feeling ‘exhausted’, ‘dead tired’ and ‘you’re almostbeside yourself with such tiredness that you just want to cry’.
Communication challenges: good manners and behaving appropriately
For most of the students, interacting effectively with the Koreans and Indians theymet was challenging, because it required them to have knowledge of cultural prac-tices different from their own. For example, Jane was unaware that making a com-plaint is a practice shaped by cultural protocols and expectations that are differentin Korea than they are in Australia. She, on the behalf of all the students, raisedwith the Korea trip organiser concerns about what they considered was an unaccept-able standard of accommodation.
I explained to him that we didn’t have somewhere to sleep. We’re used to sleeping inbeds, and in Australia we would never have to sleep on the floor, and we wanted togo to another hotel. And it was kind of just us in the foyer, and then all these otherpeople started coming in while I was talking to him, and I really offended him. I’mnot sure if it was what I was saying or because the other people came along […] So Ifelt really uncomfortable there. I felt really upset that I’d offended someone withoutmeaning to. […] So that was really, really uncomfortable (Jane).
That the organiser took offence may have been the result of a number of factorsincluding the ‘public’ way in which the complaint was made, something that Janeseems to have identified in retrospect. However, his umbrage also may have beencaused by expectations around modes of acceptable communication between menand women in Korea, and the loss of face experienced by a man being reprimandedby a woman. Furthermore, he may also have interpreted Jane’s complaint as anexpression of western supremacy about the inferior nature of hospitality in Korea incomparison to standards in Australia.
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Many of the pre-service teachers who went to India found it difficult to copewith the intense interest their presence in public generated. Bethany was initiallyfrightened by the attention, but then saw it as a sign of rudeness, a conclusion shecame to on the basis of her own cultural understandings of what constitutes accept-able behaviour.
But you’re either Indian or you’re not, in India, and at first I was frightened a little bitand really shocked: I thought it was really rude. They would just stare and stare andstare, so we’d be sitting on the floor of a train and there would be women around us,and the whole group would just stare, and then you’d look at them and think, I knowyou’re looking at me, but they’d keep looking at you. They just don’t take their eyesoff you.
Jacob, being unaware that beckoning someone with his hand positioned upwardsis considered offensive in Korea, found himself making an error that greatlyoffended his Korean buddy.
There’s a hand gesture as well. I think I went [beckoned] come here to my Koreanbuddy with my hand pointed upwards, rather than down. And I did that the first dayand she was scared of me for two weeks after that because that is like treating her likean animal or an underling or that sort of thing. I found that out the next day when wehad our lecture about culture and all that sort of thing. So I needed to do a lot ofexplaining to her.
Many of the students lacked a basic awareness and knowledge about some of thepractices of the cultures they were visiting, and this inadvertently led to insensitivity.
Challenges to cultural identity, beliefs and values
The international experience also challenged students’ sense of identity, their ‘Aus-tralian-ness’ and their beliefs and values. Particular incidents prompted an unsettlingof what the students assumed to be ‘normal’ and correct. For example, Bethanyrecounts an encounter with a ticket collector on a train in which the conversationsoon turned to a recent spate of assaults and attacks on Indian students in the Aus-tralian city of Melbourne. These attacks made international news and resulted inIndia publicly admonishing the Australian government for what was perceived to beits lack of action to protect Indian international students.
I found she [Jill, the group leader] wanted to please the Indian people desperatelyinstead of making us feel safe and secure, and doing the right thing by us. There wasa situation on the train […] and I was sitting next to her, and he [the ticket collector]asked, “Where are you from?” and we said, “Australia.” And he said, “Oh, we don’tlike Australia because of what happened in Melbourne with the university students”.[…] She [Jill] bent over backwards to apologise, saying that all Australians are terriblysorry and that we were in the wrong and whatever. And she wanted to keep going onabout it, and I felt offended because she wasn’t standing up for us. Because of howpatriotic I am, I was really upset that she was putting Australia down. She wasn’tmaking us look good at all. Yeah, she was trying to be Indian all the time.
Bethany, a self-declared patriot, thought Jill’s willing apology to the ticket collectoron behalf of Australians amounted to a betrayal of Australia and a betrayal of theAustralian students in her care. Bethany appeared to find the incident threatening
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and expected Jill to ‘make us feel safe and secure’. In taking the side of the Indi-ans, Jill appeared to Bethany to be not only anti-Australian, but trying to ‘beIndian’. Bethany’s emotionally charged response may have been prompted by theticket collector’s emphatic declaration of dislike for Australia as well as her reactionto the accumulative effects of generally being pushed well beyond her level of com-fort during the trip. Nevertheless, her response raises issues around her understand-ings about what constitutes national loyalty and belonging and who is an ‘insider’and an ‘outsider’.
For many of the students, the international experience was the first time theyhad not been part of the dominant cultural majority and this made them feel‘othered’. They usually thought of themselves as being ‘just normal’, a view evi-dent in their responses to an interview question about how they described their ownculture and ethnicity. Such a response is not uncommon for those from the hege-monic white ‘mainstream’ who consider that it is only ‘others’ who have an ethnic-ity (Allard & Santoro, 2006). However, as we have shown earlier in this article, thestudents stood out in Korea and India. The attention they attracted made some ofthem feel uncomfortable. The gaze was upon them and they were regarded by someKoreans and Indians as the ‘exotic other’. Kelly says:
… they’d just never seen anything like us before and like there was one girl that wentover and she was really tall and she had blonde hair and was really white and theywere just so fascinated with her, like they just wouldn’t stop staring at her and wantedto take her photo and stuff all the time on their mobile phones.
Adeline was less unsettled by the experience of attracting interest. She says inresponse to a question about whether the Indians had also approached them to makeconversation:
Yeah, it was really good actually, especially the schoolkids ‘cos now it’s compulsorythat they learn English so they were always really intrigued and on the train and stuff,a lot of people would come up every train trip and kind of be like, “so where are youfrom?” and you know, asking questions and stuff like that.
Learning through the challenges presented by an international experience
Students hit at different times, what Nadler (1995) calls the ‘Edge’, the borderbetween what is familiar, safe and comfortable – and what is unpredictable,unknown and risky. Bethany was one student who seemed to have ‘retreated’ or‘turned back’ from the edge, rather than broken through and taken up the opportu-nities to learn from the challenges presented to her. Her interview data suggest shefound the experience of being in India deeply anxiety provoking and there was littleevidence that it contributed to productive learning, either about others or herself.Maybe the dissonance created by being moved out of her zone of comfort was toogreat for her. She described the experience as
tough day in, day out, […] It was just constant hard work and I felt as though Icouldn’t get out of there. By the end of it I just had to get out. I had to go. And onthe plane, I didn’t sleep all the way because I just was so anxious to get home […] Ijust wanted to get back to my life.
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While there may have been little evidence in Bethany’s interview data that the inter-national experience was a productive learning experience, this was not so for allstudents. The dissonance created through the physical discomfort facilitated, tovarying degrees, most students’ learning about the culture of their host country. Thechallenges of being in, and dealing with, a physically different environment actedas a catalyst for them to learn about cultural practices different from their own. Thestudents talked of learning about Indian or Korean food, learning some basic Kor-ean and Hindi, understanding the significance of particular national dress styles andso on. They were able to see the connection between this knowledge and teaching,saying they would use it to teach Australian students about India or Korea.
I’ll probably do a unit of work [with students] on Korea, actually. Even though it’sWesternised, it’s still got heaps of tradition and there’s a lot of difference between hereand there, so yeah, I think I’ll do a work unit on them. I’ve definitely got theresources. Yes. (Sally)
The experience of interacting with the Koreans or Indians also challenged the stu-dents to think about how behaviours, communication styles and manners are cultur-ally and socially constructed. They also understood the need to extend theseunderstandings to the culturally diverse students they are likely to have in their clas-ses. Sonia says the Korea trip taught her the importance of understanding her stu-dents’ culture. ‘I would definitely research a student’s background if they werecoming from a different culture. That would be really important. […] I think that’swhat the Korea trip did for me’. Caitlin believes the experience:
helped my understanding about what kids might be going through at home if they arefrom a different ethnic background. Like the different religious and cultural practicesthat might be going on at home, different expectations from their parents obviouslyand different values about education.
Having to overcome the challenges associated with interacting with people forwhom English is a second language, or through their own attempts to speak Koreanor Hindi, the students became aware of the difficulties facing students who are sec-ond-language learners of English.
I know what it’s like to be a minority in the classroom. I know what it’s like not tohave a clue what the teacher’s saying. And I learnt that through our experience withthe language teacher. He didn’t say a word of English, we all started repeating thingsand then he went on, we kept going and a lot of us were looking at each other like,what are we doing? We’re lost you know. (Jacob, Korea)
Being in a situation whereby Jacob was in the minority facilitated a raised level ofawareness that may lead to more inclusive teaching practice.
The pre-service teachers were able to articulate what they learned about others’cultures through the dissonance created by being outside of their comfort zone inregard to the physical environment and communication practices. Gorski (2009)refers to this as tokenistic celebration of diversity and draws on the work of Grantand Sleeter (2006) to suggest it is only the first developmental stage of multiculturalpractice. In the case of the pre-service teachers in this study, there was little evidencethat they had moved beyond this to examine their own positioning and critique how
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their membership of the dominant majority in Australia shapes how they see ‘others’and how it plays out in their teaching. To do so, would require them to address thedissonance that had been created by the challenge to some of their assumptionsabout themselves and their location within the dominant ‘mainstream’. Only one ofthe students, Kelly, made the connection between herself as an ‘exotic other’ andhow people of cultural and ethnic difference in Australia might be similarly posi-tioned. However, even in this instance, she saw the exoticising of others as harmless,simple curiosity and she does not offer any deeper analysis.
Look, it’s like when I see an Indian lady in the supermarket dressed up with henna onher hands or something, I stare at her. It’s not because I don’t like her but because Iam purely interested in her and I was trying to think of it like that. I guess, yeah star-ing, because I’m interested. (Kelly)
It may be the case that the dissonance generated by the challenges to the pre-service teachers’ beliefs and values may have been too great and too unsettling topromote such reflection and learning. Wang (2005, p. 58) suggests that in suchsituations, students can choose to ‘reinforce their own identities rather than riskself-transformation’. As Boler and Zembylas (2003, p. 111) comment, the processof re-evaluating one’s world view ‘can incur feelings of anger, grief, disappoint-ment, and resistance’. Brown (2008, p. 9) suggests that:
A situation which engenders disequilibrium may be treated by learners as too great a‘leap’ in understanding and meaning in which case they might reject it outright orotherwise consign it to the ‘not valid in the real world’ file. Students may ignore theexperience, attribute it to luck, the efforts/support of others, or accept only sufficientaspects of the experience to make peripheral changes in their prior conceptions.
Concluding remarks
The international experiences in Korea and India presented students with a numberof interrelated challenges that moved them beyond their comfort zones into areas ofuncertainty and dissonance. In most cases, they appeared to learn something abouteither Korean or Indian culture. However, it may be the case that some were pushedtoo far beyond their comfort zone and this hindered what might have been a trans-formative learning experience. The contexts in which they found themselves wereconfronting, especially for those students teaching in the orphanages and specialneeds schools in India. There is little evidence that they developed nuanced insightsinto difference and diversity. Nor did they appear to reflect upon and critique theirown positionings, and the crucial implications of this for teaching practice in cultur-ally diverse contexts. Maybe, this lack of insight is not surprising, given that therewere few opportunities, either during or after the trip, for them to develop suchinsight. Although they received a briefing prior to leaving Australia, it focused onpractical and logistical aspects of the trip and did not adequately prepare them forthe challenges they would most likely face. Even more importantly, there was nodebriefing after the trip when, with guidance and support, they could have reflectedon particular incidents and critiqued their responses. For example, had there beenopportunities for Bethany to reflect on the incident with the conductor on the train,and to think about her reaction to the leader’s response, she may have been able toengage with sophisticated concepts of nationhood, belonging and insiderness that
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would enhance her understandings of cultural difference and diversity. Teacher edu-cation that seeks such a learning outcome for pre-service teachers needs to ensurethat international study programmes include planned opportunities for reflection,and are accompanied by academic work that engages with scholarship around whiteprivilege, nationhood, the complexities of ethnicity and ethnic belonging and cultur-ally responsive pedagogies.
Furthermore, without an accompanying programme of academic work andopportunities to debrief and make sense of their experiences, there are ethical issuesaround placing pre-service teachers in environments that can push them wellbeyond their comfort zone. The kinds of stress felt by some of them is counterpro-ductive to learning and as mentioned earlier, can simply reinforce existing attitudes.
Finally, it appears that the pre-service teachers did not develop the self-aware-ness that is integral to sophisticated and nuanced understandings of difference anddiversity, and is therefore, essential knowledge for globally competent teachers.However, we are not certain that this may not still occur. The passing of time mayconsolidate their learning in ways that were not apparent when we interviewedthem. Further research is needed over an extended period of time, if we are to fullyunderstand the transformative potential of an international experience.
Note1. These can take a variety of forms such as exchange programmes for up to one year,
short-term study programs, credit-bearing and non-credit bearing units of work, pro-grammes with varying levels of supervision, programmes involving teaching practice inschools overseas.
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